


every part of my restless heart

by sinagtala (strikinglight)



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Love Confessions, Post-Canon, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-12 23:58:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16005989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/sinagtala
Summary: Celica starts making ready to say goodbye to Mae on the first clear day after a week of rain.





	every part of my restless heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OrangeBlossoms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangeBlossoms/gifts).



> For [a dialogue challenge I'm running on Twitter](https://twitter.com/judgmentarcana/status/1038416790236233728), prompted by the lovely Blossoms. She asked for prompt #29: "I'm not going anywhere."
> 
>  
> 
> [Title/mood music.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDyPuMEUJU8)

Celica starts making ready to say goodbye to Mae on the first clear day after a week of rain.

It’s noon, and they’re down on the pier, picking their slow way across hardwood planks still damp and water-stained. Celica had heard her advisers saying that the people were saying so much rain was a blessing so soon after the coronation, doubly so to come on the heels of such a long drought. It’s only today that she’s had the chance to come out of the castle and hear—and see—all of it for herself, ignoring those same advisers when they protested that surveying the last of the trading ships were things queens had other people do.

She is, perhaps, being willful, but Celica thinks that this is at most only a small rebellion. Meager payment for all the goodness she knows she’ll spend her life upholding now. And a queen needs to know her people; in the end, no one can argue with that.

At the moment Celica’s chatting with one of the captains, inquiring after his cargo and his ship, quietly negotiating passage to Novis for her friends. A little ahead of her she hears Mae discussing spells with the mages that will work the wind and the waves to ensure a safe journey. Celica can hear her laughing, making a joke as she’s always been wont to do, but when she glances over Mae’s eyes are fever-bright, her face flushed like it always is just before she cries—not from anything like grief, more from frustration or annoyance or some combination of the two. And Celica, her heart tying itself in a tight knot in her chest, can’t bring herself to smile the same patient smile she’s always kept in reserve for times she needs to face the possibility of Mae’s tears.

When everything is settled the captain takes his leave of her, and Mae draws back up by her side. She stops a few steps from Celica, just far enough that Celica would have to reach one arm out all the way to grasp her shoulder if she wanted. It’s a strange, timid space; Celica feels, or possibly imagines, the wood under her feet rock in the hold of an uncertain tide.

“How are the weatherworkers?”

“Clean as a whistle!” Mae declares, a little too loudly, too brassily even for her. She pauses when she hears herself, laughs in a soft huff. “So, anything else that needs doing?”

Celica shades her eyes with one hand. They feel a little wet, but the sun is high, and she can smell the salt on the breeze that blows past. “Let’s go sit on the seawall.”

Mae tilts her head, bemused. “Queens can sit on the seawall?”

Celica almost says queens can do whatever they want, but she can’t afford to say anything, even in jest, that might push the two of them even further apart. So instead they walk back up the pier and sit on the seawall, legs dangling, facing out towards the water. Still an arm’s length between them. Celica wonders if Novis will feel as distant when Mae takes Genny and Boey and sails at first light, even though it had felt like nothing at all to sail here together for the first time.

Tomorrow will be the last of her goodbyes. She’s been saying them since she was crowned, watching as her friends go one by one to take back the lives they put on hold for her. Saber and Atlas to the high mountains, Sonya to the valleys, the three sisters crossing the sea home to Archanea on the tallest, most fearless ship in the harbor. Alm, north to what had once been Rigel, carrying a banner in her name. _I’ll be your eyes and ears in the north, Celica. I’ll be your hand, too._

“Celica, _shhhh_.”

The noise jolts Celica. She blinks, peering around. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re thinking so loudly I can’t hear the wind,” says Mae. “What’s got your circlet in a twist?”

 _Nothing._ She’s ashamed, really, of how readily the word bubbles up to the surface without her even having to think about it—but if there’s anything she’s learned it’s that she shouldn’t lie to Mae. Even if—especially because—Mae wouldn’t push her for the truth. Or maybe that was before.

“The sun is so bright,” she says. It takes some effort to keep her voice calm, her posture relaxed. The irony isn’t lost on her that it takes so much work to appear to be at ease, especially when she adds, more softly, “I hope you have a safe journey back to the island.”

A cloud blows by. Mae’s expression immediately dampens. If Celica didn’t know better, she’d have thought her pigtails had really begun to droop. “You’re practically telling me to leave already.”

Celica brings her hands together in her lap, crumpling the fabric of her skirt up in her fingers. Her thoughts feel too balled up to unwind into actual words; something about desire, something about selfishness. She feels like this is territory she’s trod and trod again, many times over by now, but maybe it can’t be helped. She may now be a queen, but she’ll always be herself.

“Oh, Mae, I would never tell you to leave,” she murmurs, and she does mean it, only she doesn’t know how to say it’s not that easy. That maybe nothing is easy anymore, and that maybe that’s the price you pay for everyone else’s peace. “I just… I wouldn’t ask you to stay, either, if there’s nothing for you here.”

Mae scrunches up her face at that. She looks like the very idea puts a strange taste in her mouth. “You’re here, though. So I’m not going anywhere.”

 _I’m here._ Something untangles just a little in Celica’s chest to hear that, even now, despite this unusual space between them, her being here matters. She lifts her eyes and smiles, less a conscious effort than her face simply relaxing, falling into a position that feels like the most natural thing in the world when she looks at Mae, and she pats the stones beside her, inviting Mae closer, to sit shoulder to shoulder as they always have.

Mae lets out a long sigh, a similar release of a held breath, and scoots over. She stretches out her legs in front of her, leans left until her head nearly comes to rest on Celica’s shoulder.

“Listen, Celica. In case you were wondering, that’s how I really feel.” She makes a funny gesture with her hands, a haphazard circle in the air as if she means to sketch out the shape of the world and knows she won’t be able to get it just right. Celica watches, and listens. “I’m not just saying that because I have to—or because I think it’d make you feel better, or whatever. And I know you think you’d be ruining my life by keeping me cooped up here, but remember, I already went to war for you. Everything else’ll be a cakewalk.”

Celica thinks wryly that Mae’s never sat on the Queen’s Council, has never been in a room full of people and felt all alone. Small mercies, she thinks, without a shred of bitterness, for once. She can’t imagine Mae sitting still too long in a room where she wasn’t allowed to laugh.

“But it’s not, Mae. Going to be a cakewalk.”

“Say ‘cakewalk’ again.” Mae grins, all her earlier hesitation gone. She tosses her head. Contrary to everything Celica might say, things are always so simple with Mae. It’s always tempting to fall into step with that simplicity and imagine that’s all there is to this particular dance. “And, well, it will. Or it won’t. Either way, doesn’t change where I wanna be.”

Celica wonders if there’s something to be said for being here. Now. Sitting together in the sunlight with their faces to the sea, watching the water shimmer as it spills over the edge of the world into the sky. When they first set out together she never imagined peace would be so ordinary.

It should be easier to reach for Mae’s hand than it is—they’ve been holding hands for years, it should be the easiest thing, it should be nothing at all—but many things happen at once. She moves her fingers, feels Mae’s fingers, pulls her hand back. Mae flails and nearly falls off the wall, is saved only by Celica catching her by the wrist. Their shoulders bump, and then their heads lean together; they cling to each other laughing like little girls and for just a second, even in the middle of all this momentary chaos, everything is simple.

“Holy smokes, I nearly killed the queen!” yells Mae, so loudly that the sailors across the way look over their shoulders at her. When she turns back to Celica her face is rigid, solemn—but you’d never believe it if you looked into her eyes and saw the spark of mirth dancing there. “Well, there you go. If you’re so dead set on sending me away, there’s your excuse.”

Celica laughs, and the sailors turn again. In that moment it sounds almost like it’s coming out of someone else—but what a surprise, in the end, to find that it’s her after all. “I believe in forgiveness,” she tells Mae, piously, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye.

Mae giggles, clinging to her other hand. “I hope you also believe in sugared almonds, ‘cause I saw some in the market on the way over here, and…”

Sugared almonds, sticky fingers, laughter, home. The gentlest of rebellions, Celica thinks, long overdue.

“Sugared almonds and maybe some gingerbread,” she agrees, if only for the simple delight of seeing Mae beam as she crows, “Now you’re speakin’ my language!”

In the end, it’s Celica who helps Mae off the wall, and they negotiate how to hold each other’s hands, whose wrist goes over whose and how the fingers intertwine. And as they close that final bit of distance Celica feels the last stubborn tangles in her heart uncurl and settle for the first time, in this world where suddenly the peace she’s only ever  dreamed about finally seems real, and Mae is just refusing to let her let go.

“This is where I want to be too,” she says.


End file.
